Letter from Brazil - Stories by Mario Osava / IPS Inter Press Service

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Wednesday, February 08, 2012 08:35 GMT

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Only Civil Society Can Save Rio+20, Say Activists
By Mario Osava*
RIO DE JANEIRO - Large-scale social mobilisation, including street protests and parallel activities, is the only thing can save the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) from ending in nothing but frustration, according to activists and analysts.
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Growing Pains in a Country Under Construction
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO - Major infrastructure works are sprouting like mushrooms in Brazil, generating millions of jobs and drawing more than 60 billion dollars in foreign investment in 2011. But this thrust has failed to sustain economic growth, which according to the latest projections is below three percent.
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Miracle Mileage from a Hobbled Economy
Analysis by Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO - In 2011, Brazil's economy grew by less than half the 7.5 percent it attained in 2010. However, this result would be miraculous in any other country with the barriers to productivity and competitiveness that prevail in Brazil.
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The Unsustainable Political Deficiencies of Environmentalism
Analysis by Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO - The environmental movement won the ideological battle with the growth of awareness on climate change. Environmentalists are no longer seen as "loonies" or granola-eating hippies: the people seen as on the fringe" now are the climate sceptics who deny that global warming is caused by human activity.
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Amazon Turtles - Illegal Protein for the Poor, Delicacy for the Rich
By Mario Osava
BAJO XINGU, Brazil - "Many people lie" about the common practice of poaching turtles to eat or sell, said a man renowned for his fishing skills who lives on the banks of the Xingu river in Brazil's eastern Amazon jungle region.
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Contradictory Goals in Agriculture
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil aims to meet its climate change targets in agriculture by stimulating techniques that have been proven to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – but which may increase the use of toxic agrochemicals, activists say.
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Global Warming Threatens Future of Amazon Turtles
By Mario Osava *
BAJO XINGÚ, Brazil - The more data she gathered for her Master’s thesis, the more alarmed the young Brazilian biologist became. The Amazon turtles born in the dozens of nests examined in 2008 and 2010 were all female. And only eight percent of the hatchlings studied in 2007 had been male.
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Brazil Cannot Swim Against the Climate Current
By Mario Osava *
RIO DE JANEIRO - With no meaningful proposals, and in the face of internal setbacks and an adverse international context, Brazil is largely unprepared to assume the leadership role expected of an environmental power at the Durban climate change conference.
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Belo Monte Dam and Hunters Endanger Amazon Turtles
By Mario Osava *
BAJO XINGÚ, Brazil - Luiz Cardoso da Costa was horrified as he watched the Amazonian manatee, a large docile beast, bleeding out from the knife wound he had dealt it, yet greedily gulping down grasses as if eating could somehow stave off death.
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Brazil's Health System Inspires Abroad, Frustrates at Home
By Mario Osava*
RIO DE JANEIRO - News that the government of South Africa was inspired by Brazil's health system in setting up its own universal coverage scheme might meet with scepticism in this South American country.
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Public Media Expanding
By Mario Osava
ASUNCIÓN - The public media are growing in Latin America, with a new focus that puts an emphasis on independence from the state and the backlash from the private media, said journalists, academics and officials meeting in the Paraguayan capital.
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Costly Water for the Poor Northeast
By Mario Osava
SALGUEIRO, Brazil - The visual impact is harsh: flattened hills, valleys full of mud, and kilometres and kilometres of bulldozed land - the modification of nature in Brazil's semiarid Northeast region is disturbing due to the enormous dimensions involved.
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Shark Attacks Attest to Environmental Sins of Suape Port
By Mario Osava *
RECIFE, Brazil - The Suape port complex may be eternally absolved of its environmental sins for ushering in unprecedented prosperity in the impoverished northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, and for having been built before stricter requirements were introduced.
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Mario Osava, IPS's Brazil correspondent, covers political, economic and social issues, including human rights, labour, environment, poverty, indigenous issues, and sustainable development. He has travelled the corners of Latin America's largest country to bring you these stories.